Charter's Trials of NebuAd Halted 97
Posted
by
timothy
from the what-we-meant-was dept.
from the what-we-meant-was dept.
RalphTheWonderLlama writes "The trials of NebuAd by Charter Communications were halted after it gained the attention of Congressmen Ed Markey and Joe Barton. The online behavioral targeting system has been called "a 'man-in-the-middle attack' and various other unflattering names" but would certainly be an easy way for an ISP to cash in on client profiling."
PaisteUser points out MSNBC's coverage as well, according to which the ad-insertion scheme was dropped because of "concerns raised by customers."
Customers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Delayed != Halted (Score:4, Insightful)
From the article:
Charter has now agreed to delay any further rollout, though it won't abandon the plan entirely.
Elsewhere, I have read predictions that up to 10% of Internet traffic was going to be commercially monitored by the end of the year. It might be good for everybody to let friends and family know and to start making privacy-enhancement software easy to use and ubiquitous.
If people don't know about it, they're unlikely to raise a fuss and then we're all sunk.
Possible to Block? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've seen plenty of coverage on this, but no technical details on how it would actually be implemented beyond there being a mysterious "box" at the ISP. Is it, or will it be, possible to block or restrict this device from tampering with traffic? Or are we pretty much at the mercy of the providers here?
Scurry under a rock (Score:5, Insightful)
I particularly like the little bit about how they will hold off on implementation while these important privacy concerns can be addressed.
Who wants to bet that addressing this means waiting under a rock until no one's looking and then going forward with substantially the same nonsense?
Hundreds of angry customers vs. 2 Congressmen (Score:5, Insightful)
What awesome customer service!
Chip H.
The internet is a utility (Score:5, Insightful)
If ISPs are going to keep their de facto monopoly status, they should be prevented from doing anything buy carry data, by legal means if necessary.
Re:Delayed != Halted (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Possible to Block? (Score:4, Insightful)
Welcome my son, (Score:1, Insightful)
To the machine.
Re:Possible to Block? (Score:2, Insightful)
Your only hope would be to encrypt your traffic, which would raise a few flags if they are really watching you that closely.
Re:Hundreds of angry customers vs. 2 Congressmen (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Notes on Liberalism (Score:4, Insightful)
(sorry for feeding the trolls, I just couldn't quite pass this one by. I can't fathom how the term "liberal" can be so mangled in contemporary USA.)
Re:The internet is a utility (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Notes on Liberalism (Score:3, Insightful)
When the average of your population reads at a basic or below-basic level, it is quite fathomable indeed.
To quote the late great George Carlin, "half of them are even stupider!"
Re:Delayed != Halted (Score:3, Insightful)
The TOS that people sign don't abrogate their right to privacy, especially with other individuals with whom they communicate who are not party to the TOS in any way. The Charter TOS may in fact be illegal. IANAL, but deep inspection is a radical and unexpected step!
Charter, unlike say AT&T, is usually the sole provider in their own markets for cable, and so there is no competition; it's not a matter of hey-- let's go with TW, Cox, Comcast, etc. That's not the way cable plays, although an attempt to do this years ago was tried.
Litigation does work. Legislation is iffy. Scaring the hell out of people in congressional hearings is a joy in circumstances like this.
Re:The internet is a utility (Score:3, Insightful)
Most of the places I've lived, there was only one choice for terrestrial high-speed connections. The only other "option" was something like IDSL, expensive and slower than high speed offerings. Satellite is an option for anyone that doesn't mind round trip times of 1 second that creep up to 3 seconds in high-usage time, often with really low caps and are quick to throttle you if you use it for more than viewing static pages and downloading text emails. If you think that's an equivelent option to 20+ Mbps ADSL 2+ or 10+ Mbps cable offerings, then I think you are making an unreasonable range of equivelency. That's like saying that the post office didn't have a monopoly (even though it was defined as a monopoly and technically is still a monopoly by law) because you could always walk 1000 miles to deliver the message yourself. Technically true, but practically worthless, and it does nothing to change the monopoly status of the Post Office.
Yes, I agree that people often mean duopoly when they say monopoly, but the point is the same. There are, in almost all locations, only one or two choices for high speed Internet. Most of those carriers have or still do receive direct payments from the government for services provided or increasing availability. Because choices are limited to one or two real choices, and those choices are funded by the government, people believe the government should step in and make sure the government-supported monopolies play fair.